Preserving Novelty In Sandbox Games

Recently I've been pondering about a game's novelty. I soon realized that there isn't a game that I've played where after restarting or such, I had the same feeling/experience as I did when I first played it. That there no really balance, to where the game will always have the same novelty as it did when I started playing or something. Is there such a way to keep that experience, I feel sad when I look at a game and say "Oh yeah I remember when that was fun.", or "Man I wish I could replay this game again without any knowledge."

For example, Minecraft, I remember playing the game, learning new things, exploring, it was... new. Now a days its more about creativity and everyone practically knows what to do, there's no exploration involved, or learning something new.

Mount & Blade, There's a point in the game where you just win everytime. Same for the Total War series, civilization series, I just feel there's a lack of freshness to it, even with every game that comes out.

Do you think there will ever be a time where we'll be able to keep that novelty in games? Do you think there are ways to preserve novelty? Or do you believe that a game will always get old.

I'm on the side where I know games will get old, and I will want to play them for the nostalgia, but I wish I could go back in time and relive some of the times where I had the fresh feeling when playing.

 

Have you tried modded Minecraft?

 

Modding is a great way to keep things fresh in a game, but of course it relies on a community to manufacture new content and features.

Procedurally generated content is another way to introduce new elements into a game- check out No Man's Sky for an extreme example. You can also mix things up by driving logic with random number generators.

All of these methods can help, or extend the novelty of a game, but not quite indefinitely. I think games should be designed with a lifetime in mind- Novelty only lasts for as long as there are still features being introduced- and then the player should have opportunity to really experience the full depth of play all of the features can offer. Check out that DiveKick game for an example of a game that ditches extended novelty for a whole lot of depth of play.

Games are capable of a staggering amount of depth of play- think of Chess, or Poker. No new features have been introduced in quite a long time, but a player can spend hundreds of games discovering strategies and methods of improving their play. I suppose learning a new strategy can also feel a bit like novelty as well.

 

We call that "depth". It's used when you don't want to rely on just novelty for your game.

You can not preserve novelty, because it also lasts while something is novel - i. e. new. It will wear off sooner or later. The more and the more versatile content you have, the longer it will last, but still it will wear off sometimes.

 

Unless you can figure out a way to hide mechanics from a player, or invent new ones on the fly, everything will eventually get stale. Don't think any other way than that is going to work.

Oh the misnomers associated to PGC. Realistically, the only thing that procedural content prevents is granular behaviors becoming rote and that's basically it. It frequently can make exploring the world and the mechanics boring faster than if it was made normally.

I highly doubt no man's sky will actually keep most people's interest for longer than ten hours. I'm sure it will have some lovely backdrops, but unless there is something concrete to do and interact with (which I haven't heard a thing about), no one is going to become invested.

 

Like I said before - only if the mechanics rely on novelty and nothing else. If they offer depth and variety, like the rules of Chess, Magic: The Gathering, DnD, Hearthstone or even World of Tanks, they can stay interesting for a very long time, even if the player has them all memorized after some time.

But novelty is just something that gets you sales on Steam, not something that gets you a loyal player base that stays with your game for years. jm2c.

 

Those games are also competitive and largely rely on that nature to keep their player base. People keep going long after the mechanics themselves ended up losing luster.

Single player games are pretty much dependent on novelty. If someone thinks they have seen and done everything, there usually isn't much keeping them to a game.

 

Not entirely true, given how many hours people can spend with Civilization's single-player mode or things like the Anno series or Tycoon games.

 

Either way it's still the meta game that's keeping people interested. It's not the base mechanics that are keeping people interested, it's their dynamics. It's the interplay of mechanics that are remaining novel and are taking a long time to explore.

 

Yeah. But I don't see how that contradicts anything what I'm saying. Your mechanics have to offer depth, meaning they have to create versatile and complex dynamics, and there isn't really another way to keep them interesting for long.

 

It extents the life, but it doesn't prevent death... So I don't know why we are arguing about the same thing.

Meh, rabble rabble